Good News!
The picture which Inspiration has given of the antediluvian world,represents too truly the condition to which modern society is fast hastening.1 The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth.2 Who can doubt that satanic agencies are at work among men with increasing activity to distract and corrupt the mind, and defile and destroythe body?3
Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery, and fraud.Every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, ofindifference to human suffering, of brutal, fiendish destruction of humanlife. Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide.4 Bold robberies are of frequent occurrence. Strikes are common. Thefts and murders are committed on every hand. Men possessed of demons are taking the lives of men, women, and little children. Men have become infatuated with vice, and every species of evil prevails.5
Those in high positions of trust, whom we may call, as God called some in thedays of Noah, mighty men, men of renown, know little of the causes thatunderlie the present state of society. Many do not care to know; others do not study from cause to effect. Those who hold the reins of government are not able to solve the problems of moral corruption, poverty, pauperism, and increasing crime of every type, manifest in all classes, from the highest to the lowest.6
In our large cities there exists an appalling condition of poverty. Multitudes are destitute of food, clothing, or shelter fit for a humanbeing. In the same cities are men of wealth, who have more than heart couldwise; who live luxuriously, spending their money upon richly furnished houses and personal adornment; or worse, upon the gratification of sensual appetites,–upon tobacco, liquors, and other things that destroy the power of the brain, unbalance the mind, and debase the soul.7 If men today weresimple in their habits, living in harmony with nature’s laws, as did Adamand Eve in the beginning, there would be an abundant supply for the needs ofthe human family. But selfishness and the indulgence of appetite havebrought sin and misery, from excess on the one hand, and from want on the other. 8
Courts of justice are corrupt. Rulers are actuated by desire of gain, andlove of sensual pleasure. Intemperance has beclouded the faculties of many,so that Satan has almost complete control of them. Jurists are perverted,bribed, deluded Drunkenness and revelry, passion, envy, dishonesty of every sort, are represented among those who administer the laws.9 Property,reputation, and even life itself, are insecure when left to the judgment of men who are intemperate and immoral. How many innocent persons have been condemned to death, how many more have been robbed of all their earthly possessions, by the injustice of drinking jurors, lawyers, witnesses, and even judges!10
Immorality abounds everywhere. Licentiousness is the special sin of thisage. Never did vice lift its deformed head with such boldness as now.11 Hownumerous are immoral books, which lead to unholy desires, and fire thepassions of the heart, and lead away from all that is pure and holy!12 Hownumerous are the books of infidel tendencies, which are calculated to unsettle the mind through specious doubts! Satan has breathed his poisonous breath upon them, and a deadly, spiritual malaria affects the soul thatreads them.13
Lovesick sentimentalism prevails. Married men receive attention from married and unmarried women; women also appear to be charmed and lose reason and spiritual discernment and good common sense; they do the very things that the word of God condemns, the very things that the testimonies of the Spirit of God condemns. Warnings and reproofs are before them in clear lines, yet they go over the path that others have traveled before them. It is like aninfatuating game at which they are playing.14 But few feel it to be areligious duty to govern their passions. They have united themselves in marriage to the object of their choice, and therefore reason that marriage sanctifies the indulgence of the baser passions. Even men and women professing godliness give loose rein to their lustful passions, and have nothought that God holds them accountable for the expenditure of vital energy,which weakens their hold on life and enervates the entire system.15
There is cause for alarm in the condition of the religious world today.16 The line of distinction between professing Christians and the ungodly is now hardly distinguishable. Church-members love what the world loves, and areready to join with them; and Satan determines to unite them in one body andthus strengthen his cause by sweeping all into the ranks of Spiritualism.17 And like their great leader, the rebel chief, they are in rebellion against the law of God, and they despise the blood of Christ. 18
The professed Christian churches are not converting the world; for they arethemselves corrupted with selfishness and pride, and need to feel theconverting power of God in their midst before they can lead others to a purer or higher standard.19 So many have brought into the church their own unsubdued spirit, unrefined; their spiritual taste is perverted by their own immoral, debasing corruption, symbolizing the world in spirit, in heart, inpurpose, confirming themselves in lustful practices, and are full ofdeception through and through in their professed Christian life. Living assinners, claiming to be Christians!20 Their so-called righteousness couldnever enter the kingdom of heaven.21
A large proportion of the Christian world divorce religion from theirbusiness. Thousands of little tricks and petty dishonesties are practiced in dealing with their fellow men, which reveal the true state of the heart, showing its corruption.22 Some accept the Sabbath and reject the thirdangel’s message; yet because they have received the Sabbath they claim thefellowship of those who believe all the present truth.23 Some of you arecontending one against another. Yet all claim to be abiding in Jesus. Is there anything in Christ that wars against Christ?24 He in whose heart Christ abides recognizes Christ abiding in the heart of his brother. Christ never wars against Christ. Christ never exerts an influence against Christ.25 With the great masses of mankind, there is no unity, except as men confederate to accomplish their selfish purposes.26 Rulers, politicians, lawyers, doctors, merchants, join the church as a means of securing therespect and confidence of society, and advancing their own worldly interests. Thus they seek to cover all their unrighteous transactions under a profession of Christianity.27 The agencies of evil are combining theirforces, and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis.28 In the family, Satan is at work. His banner waves, even in professedly Christian households.29 Many are sunken in sin. Many are distressed with suffering, want, unbelief, despondency. Disease of every type afflicts them, both body and soul.30 They are affected by the prevailing iniquity, andbackslide from God; but it is not necessary that they should be thus affected. The cause of this declension is that they do not stand clear from this iniquity. The fact that their love to God is waxing cold because iniquity abounds, shows that they are, in some sense, partakers in this iniquity, or it would not affect their love for God and their zeal and fervor in His cause. 31
Wickedness, idolatry, drunkenness, self-indulgence, and corruption abound more and more, and God’s Spirit will not always strive with men. 32 More and more the world is setting at naught the claims of God. Men have become boldin transgression. The wickedness of the inhabitants of the world has almost filled the measure of their iniquity. This earth has almost reached the place where God will permit the destroyer to work his will upon it.33 Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and inthousands of forms, is Satan exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripeningharvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. 34 If the Lord were not soon to come and put an end to his cruel work, the earth would ere long bedepopulated.35
Apparently these calamities are capricious outbreaks of disorganized, unregulated forces of nature, wholly beyond the control of man; but in them all, God’s purpose may be read.36 Science seeks to explain all these. The signs thickening around us, telling of the near approach of the Son of God,are attributed to any other than the true cause. 37
Rulers and statesmen, men who occupy positions of trust and authority,thinking men and women of all classes, have their attention fixed upon theevents taking place about us. They are watching the strained, restless relations that exist among the nations. They observe the intensity that is taking possession of every earthly element, and they recognize thatsomething great and decisive is about to take place–that the world is on the verge of a stupendous crisis.38 The centralizing of wealth and power; the vast combinations for the enriching of the few at the expense of the many;the combinations of the poorer classes for the defense of their interestsand claims; the spirit of unrest, of riot and bloodshed; the world-wide dissemination of the same teachings that led to the French Revolution–all are tending to involve the whole world in a struggle similar to that which convulsed France.39 Yet this apostasy, widespread as it has come to be, is not universal. Not all in the world are lawless and sinful; not all havetaken sides with the enemy. God has many thousands who have not bowed theknee to Baal, many who long to understand more fully in regard to Christ and the law, many who are hoping against hope that Jesus will soon come to end the reign of sin and death. And there are many who have been worshipping Baal ignorantly, but with whom the Spirit of God is still striving.40
Everything in our world is in agitation.41 The world is stirred with the spirit of war.42 There are wars, and rumors of wars.43 Satan delights in war; for it excites the worst passions of the soul, and then sweeps intoeternity its victims steeped in vice and blood. It is his object to incite the nations to war against one another; for he can thus divert the minds of the people from the work of preparation to stand in the day of God.44 But while already nation is rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, there is not now a general engagement. As yet the four winds are held until the servants of God shall be sealed in their foreheads. 45 the third message must do its work. Prophecy relative to the message and the action of the two-horned beast must be fulfilled.46 The substitution of the laws of men for the laws of God, the exaltation, by merely human authority, of Sunday in place of the Bible Sabbath, is the last act in the drama. When thissubstitution becomes universal, God will reveal Himself. He will arise inHis majesty to shake terribly the earth.47
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Matthew 11:15 Poverty is coming upon this world, and there will be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation.48 The spirit of anarchy is permeating all nations, andthe outbreaks that from time to time excite the horror of the world are but indications of the pent-up fires of passion and lawlessness that, having once escaped control, will fill the earth with woe and desolation. 49 It istime now for those who believe that Jesus is soon coming to take their standfully on the Lord’s side.50
Chester Cosby, USA
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1. PP, p. 102
2. 9T, p. 11
3. MH, p. 143
4. MH, pp. 142, 143
5. 9T, p. 11
6. HR 8/11/1896
7. RH 2/17/1903
8. MH, p. 47
9. RH 3/14/1912
10. ST 2/11/1886
11. AH, p. 328
12. YI 11/16/1893
13. MYP. pp. 276,277
14. TSB, p. 243
15. 2T, p. 472
16. PP, p. 166
17. 4SP, p. 406
18. RH 4/15/1875
19. 9T, p. 65
20. GCDB 2/4/1893
21. DA, p. 309
22. 4T, p. 337
23. 1T, p. 326
24. 2SAT, p. 14
25. ST 2/7/1900
26. 8T, p. 27
27. 4SP, p. 234
28. 9T, p. 11
29. GC, p. 586
30. Mar, p. 26
31. 2T, p. 346
32. RH 9/5/1907
33. 7T, p. 141
34. 4SP, pp. 407,408
35. CTBH 150
36. PK, p. 277
37. RH 1/11/1887
38. RH 11/23/1905
39. Ed., p. 228
40. PK, p. 171
41. PK, p. 536
42. 9T, p.14
43. 6T, p. 14
44. 4SP, pp. 406,407
45. 6T, p. 14
46. 2BIO, p. 440.3
47. 7T, p. 141
48. Becho 10/8/1894
49. PP, p. 102
50. Pc, p. 292